I'm coming back after years away! Help me do this right!

I've been out of the guitar game for what is essentially 4 years now, infrequently playing when I could get my hands on an instrument.For the most part, my hands still remember what to do, though they're a little bit slower, as expected. I come from the metal crowd like most of you, but I've decided that this time around, I want to learn the instrument from a technical standpoint instead of just playing metal and looking up tabs. I'm going to start by only playing in standard tuning (have to, I have a floyd haha) and I want to be forced to play all different genres and incorporate theory along the way.

If you were to learn guitar again, how would you do it? How would you make yourself into a multifaceted guitar player that can play multiple genres with a grasp for most techniques? What are some good resources to learn guitar again, but incorporating music theory as I go?

I should mention that I know music theory already, I was just too stubborn to take the time to apply it to guitar. Sorry for the rambling!

I think your efforts would be best spent focusing on one genre at a time. You would be surprised at how many variations you can find on a single idea in even the tiniest corner of a repertoire. Mastery is found in deep involvement, not in breadth. You can use breadth to strengthen your specialization, and your specialization to inform your breadth however.

Here are some resources that you might want to absorb to help you ask the right questions, be respectful to other traditions, and keep yourself on track:

Hey man I think I can help you big time. I'm currently a junior in high school taking ap music theory, I bring this up not to brag but to explain what my stance with guitar was for a while. I bit off more than I could chew. You say you know theory, which is great but how far have you gone with it?

If you can read sheet music and can do it fairly well then you just need to find a fun, but educational way to apply it to guitar. This was my problem for along time, especially considering I'm a big time metal fan. Metal is a genre that is a unique and can use a lot of theory and interesting techniques, but I think you need to spread your listening a bit.

There are really three important things to music and songwritting: Rhythm, Melody, and Harmony. Metal tends puts a big emphasis on rhythm, and while many bands like Meshuggah for example have done so much creatively with it you need need to find bands or genres that touch on each of the three. I recommend you even try learning some songs you like that aren't metal. Once your listening and playing is more diverse you will be more open with with understanding is actually making use of the three important things

Now with actually applying music theory to guitar, you need to do basic things like recognizing intervals. Intervals are so ....ing important. Say for example you want to play a major arpeggio starting from the third string but you don't know the shape for it. If you know the intervals to a major arpeggio then you don't even need to think about it. If you get good enough with intervals you will be able to understand how and where arpeggios and scales work on guitar and won't rely on shapes.

This may sound like a boring experience, which it can be if you don't make it fun. Find some songs that interest you and analyze them. Look at every chord you play, look at the intervals in he chord. Look at every note you play in a solo, look at how it is outlining the melody and harmony. This is stuff you don't even need to look at on paper, use your ears.

I recently did this with some metal songs like
-Legion of the Serpent, and Ancient Covenant by the Faceless
-as well as Racecar, Froggin Bullfish, and Pale Aura by Periphery.

Just analyzing these four songs along has got me on track with my knowledge of theory an knowledge of the fretboard. One important thing to note is, if you are going to analyze a song, do it the WHOLE way through. As guitar players we have a tendency to only learn the cool parts of songs, don't do this. When you learn a whole song you start to understand how even complex long songs are all cohesive in one way or another.

Hope you got something out of this ramble and hope I helped in someway, best of luck to you.

Very few guitar plays masters every aspect and every genre there is, because guitar has evolved in so many directions that it is hard to cover it all.
So the risk is to be able to do everything, without being really good at anything if you get my point.

Try to make a list of the genres that you would like be to able to cover fairly well, might be something like this:

Pop/Rock
Metal
Finger-picked jazz
Funk

Now instead of trying to dive into all those at once, try and focus on one of them for the first few months.
An important aspect of learning guitar is that it should be fun and enjoyable so that you pick up the instrument and practice every day.
So if being able to play a couple of easy Metallica songs is what makes you pick up the instrument, then start with metal, similar argument for the other genres.

Then when you have gotten a good start at one aspect of guitar playing, try starting to learn the other genres.

Remember that Rome wasn't build in one day. Any of those styles I mentioned could easy take several years to become decent at.

Another advice would be to get into a party/cover band. Usually these types of bands plays everything from Lady Gaga to Metallica, so naturally this will make you learn a lot of different styles out of necessity.

Right, that ended up being a bit all over the place, hope it helps anyway